This
past weekend saw a gathering of false prophets and teachers the likes of which
are seldom seen. Lou Engle organized "The Send" in order to commission people
to take his false gospel to the ends of the earth. The clip above is to the
segment from Shawn Bolz, the resident false prophet of Bethel Church. Lingering
on stage and in the background you can see Heidi Baker, Todd White and even
Bill Johnson, just so you can an idea of the scope of heresy we are talking
about. One of Bolz' favorite shticks is what he calls words of knowledge but in
actuality it is just the same old psychic trick of cold reading. Bolz accesses
a bit of identifying information about people in the crowd and then calls them
out from the stage as if God is telling him their name. Then he "prophelies"
over them with vague predictions of grandiosity mixed with other tidbits of
identifying information usually garnered ahead of time. In the age of digital
access to personal information and social media, you do not need a huge head
start to find out something about someone. If someone can access your Facebook
page? Yeah words of knowledge become much easier.

The
key verse today mentions the word of knowledge gift of the Holy Spirit. It is
the only verse that mentions this gift. So all we know about it is in this
verse and the verses that explain the gifts are for the building up of the body
of Christ and apportioned by the Holy Spirit as He wills. It is widely believed
that a true word of knowledge is when God reveals to a person facts about
someone they do not know so they can prove to them that God exists. My
understanding then is this gift is used to convince unbelievers. A word of
wisdom is used to illuminate scripture for a believer. Either way, Shawn
pretends the initial knowledge of the name is the word of knowledge and then he
sprinkles in other facts but he seems to do it all through his smart phone! In
the above clips he acknowledges this critique but claims he is just reviewing
his notes! Yes Shawn! That is our point! Let us review these two cold readings
and see how the scam works.

"I'm looking for
a Dennis either from the Ukraine or whose parents were from the Ukraine. You
moved to America. I think either to Washington State or DC? Is there a Dennis?
We have somebody! Thank God!" -- Shawn Bolz

Infamous
huckster PT Barnum is credited with saying there is a sucker born every minute.
This is phase one of Shawn Bolz Shtick. He draws his victims in by pretending
that God has given him a word of knowledge. He gets these words however from
his smart phone, while on stage, while calling out for Dennis. He tries to
explain it by saying he is just looking at his notes but that's the entire
point. If it is a word of knowledge how do you have notes? At best now it is a
pre meditated word of knowledge he is claiming. Now we can go into the likelihood
of there being a Dennis in a crowd of over 50,000 people or how Dennis is one
of the top ten male names for Ukrainians but in all likelihood Shawn has notes
because he researched Mr. Dennis way before he went on stage to "prophesy." You
see everyone who attended The Send had to register prior. With a handful of identifying
information it is actually quite easy to access all sorts of social media, such
as Facebook and Instagram. Now that Shawn has reeled the sucker in, he prophelies:

"Dennis the Lord
Himself has been walking with you since you were a little boy. And you have had
a hard time there in the middle because of some of the things that have
happened in your family but it is going to give you power over divorce and
broken families and adoption and foster care. The Lord is saying He's raising
you up. There's something you are supposed to build. I think you are on the West
coast now but you will be on the East coast. He has put you on the highest
lampstand." -- Shawn Bolz

Let's
break this down beloved. The trick of fake psychic readings, tarot card
readings, palm readings, and now Christian prophecy is to generalize things so
that they would apply to most people in the normal course of life. You apply it
to long periods of time and a level of vagueness so you always have an out. For
example, you will never hear, "you were abused by your uncle Nathanial in 1994
but that will make you stronger as you continue to grow." Instead you will
hear, "you have had a hard time there in
the middle because of some of the things that have happened in your family." Hard
time? Who doesn't have hard times and isn't family usually the most likely
source? What does "in the middle mean?" This sentence is so vague it probably applies
to all of our lives. Let's analyze line by line:

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